The End of All Songs

"Should we not try to rescue him?"

"Jagged is the only one qualified to do that, Jherek, I'd say. If we tried to help we might find ourselves caught in the loop, too."

Jherek watched as the cone appeared for the third time and the figures went through their set ritual. He tried to laugh, but he could not find it as amusing as did his friend.

"I wonder if Jagged knew of this," continued Bishop Castle, "and trapped Bra

Everyone, it seemed, suspected his father of a scheme. However, Jherek was not in a mood to defend Lord Jagged again today.

Bishop Castle brought his chariot closer to Jherek's locomotive. "By the by, Jherek, have you seen Doctor Volospion's latest? It's called 'The History of the World in Miniature' — the entire history of mankind from start to finish, all done with tiny reproductions at incredible speed — it can be slowed down to observe details of any particular mille

"It is reminiscent, is it not, of something of Jagged's?"

"Is it? Well, Volospion always saw himself as a rival to Jagged, and perhaps hopes to fill his shoes, now that he is occupied with other things. O'Kala Incarnadine has been safely resurrected, by the by, and has lost interest in being a goat. He has become some kind of leviathan, with his own lake. Now that is a copy — of Amelia's creation. Well, if you'll forgive me, I'll be on my way. Others will want to see this."

For the fourth time, the whirling cone appeared, Bra

"Hrunt!" cried Captain Mubbers.

"Ferkit!" declared Bra

Blows were exchanged. They returned to the craft.

Jherek wondered if he should not continue on to Castle Canaria and tell Lord Jagged what was happening, but the sight had distressed him too much and he did not relish a further encounter with his father and mother today. He decided to return with the news to Amelia.

It was almost twilight as he directed the locomotive home. The darkness seemed to come quicker than usual and it was beneath a starless, moonless sky that he eventually located the house where only one light burned at a single window.

He was surprised, as he landed, to note that the window was not Amelia's but his own. He did not recall leaving a light there. He felt alarm as he entered the house and ran upstairs. He knocked at her door. "Amelia! Amelia!" There was no reply. Puzzled, he opened his door and went in. The lamp burned low, but there was sufficient light to see that his Amelia occupied the bed, her face turned away from him, the great sable sheet drawn tightly around her body so that only her head was visible.

"Amelia?"

She did not turn, though he could see that she was not asleep. He could do nothing but wait.

Eventually, she spoke in a small, unsteady voice. "As a woman, I shall always be yours."

"Are we —? Is this marriage?"

She looked up at him. There were tears in her eyes; her expression was serious. Her lips parted.

He kneeled upon the bed; he took her head in his hands. He kissed her eyes. She moved convulsively and he thought he alarmed her until he realized that she was struggling free of the sheet, to open her arms to him, to hold him, as if she feared to fall. He took her naked shoulders in his arm, he stroked her cheek, experiencing a sensation at once violent and tender — a sensation he had never left before. The smell of her body was warm and sweet.

"I love you," he said.

"I shall love you for ever, my dear," she replied. "Believe me."

"I do."

Her words seemed subtly inappropriate and the old sense of foreboding came and went. He kissed her. She gasped and her hands went beneath his blouse; he felt her nails in his flesh. He kissed her shoulder. She drew him to her.

"It is all I can give you…" She seemed to be weeping.

"It is everything."

She groaned. With a touch of a power-ring he disrobed, stroking the tears on her cheek, kissing her trembling shoulder, until at last he drew back the sheet and pressed himself upon her.

"The lamp," she said. He caused it to vanish and they were in complete darkness.

"Always, Jherek."

"Oh, my dearest."

She hugged him. He touched her waist. "Is this what you do?" he asked. "Or is it this?"

Then they made love; and in the fullness of time they slept.

The sun had risen. He felt it upon his eyelids and he smiled At last the future, with its confusion and its fears, was banished; nothing divided them. He turned, so that his first sight of the morning would be of her; but even as he turned the foreboding came back to him. She was not there. There was a trace of her warmth, little more. She was not in the room. He knew that she was not in the house.

"Amelia!"

This was what she had decided. He recalled her anecdote of the young man who had only dared declare his love when he knew he would never see her again. All his instincts had told him, from that moment by the fountain, that it was her intention to answer her Victorian conscience, to go back with Harold Underwood to 1896, to accept her responsibilities. It was why she had said what she said to him last night. As a woman, she would always be his, but as a wife she was committed to her husband.

He plunged from his bed, opening the window, and, naked, flung himself into the dawn sky, flying as rapidly as his power-rings could carry him, rushing towards the city, her name still on his lips, like the mad cry of a desolate seabird.

"Amelia!"

Once before he had followed her thus, coming too late to stop her return to her own time. Every sensation, every thought was repeated now, as the air burned his body with the speed of his flight. Already he pla

He reached the city. It seemed to sleep, it was so still.

And near the brink of the pit he saw the great open structure of the time-machine, the chronomnibus. Aboard he could see the time-traveller at the controls, and the policemen, all in white robes, with their helmets upon their heads, and Inspector Springer, also in white, wearing his bowler, and Harold Underwood with his hay-coloured hair and his pince-nez twinkling in the early sun. And he glimpsed Amelia, in her grey suit, seemingly struggling with her husband. Then the outlines of the machine grew faint, even as he descended. There was a shrill sound, like a scream, and the machine faded away and was gone.

He reached the ground, staggering.

"Amelia." He could barely see for his tears; he stood hopeless and trembling, his heart pounding, gasping for air.

He heard sobbing and it was not his own sobbing. He lifted his head.

She lay there, in the black dust of the city, her face upon her arm. She wept.

Half-sure that this was a terrible illusion, merely a recollection from the city's memory, he approached her. He fell on his knees beside her. He touched her grey sleeve.

She looked up at him. "Oh, Jherek! He told me that I was no longer his wife…"

"He has said as much before."

"He called me 'impure'. He said that my presence would taint the high purpose of his mission, that even now I tempted him … Oh, he said so many things. He threw me from the machine. He hates me."

"He hates sanity, Amelia. I think it is true of all such men. He hates truth. It is why he accepts the comforting lie. You would have been of no use to him."

"I was so full of my resolve. I loved you so much. I fought so hard against my impulse to stay with you."

"You would martyr yourself in response to the voice of Bromley? To a cause you know to be at best foolish?" He was surprised by his words and it was plain that he surprised her, also.